Soup Sandwich

No -- this is NOT a recipe -- although if it were, I'd make sure it was high-fat, just for my friend Tracey who likes to give me a hard time about my recipes! ; )

It's actually what I'm considering naming my blog.

One day this year, I was walking through Menards with Weldon and realized that I was wearing a shirt that had been "folded" by one of my younger kids (more wadded than folded... but they have to start somewhere!) and that it was a wrinkled mess. Weldon said it didn't look that bad. But a phrase from one of my old roommates popped into my head, "You look like a soup sandwich!"

I was living with some girls in Norfolk, Virginia (after I was out of the Army and done working in Washington D.C.; before I moved back to Indiana and then on to Colorado Springs to work for The Navigators and meet Weldon...). I was about 25. My 19-year-old, soon-to-be-doctor (very smart) roommate said that her Mom had told her she looked like a soup sandwich. I said, "What is THAT supposed to mean?" She didn't know either.

For years I thought about that phrase. Then one day it hit me... what would a soup sandwich look like? What would it be like to try to EAT one?! What a mess!

By the way, don't bother looking it up online -- there were only two entries that weren't "soup and sandwich" recipes... one was a Twilight Zone episode, and one was the Urban Dictionary, in which every one of it's entries includes the f-word! I'll copy the safe part of the one voted as most accurate here:

1.	soup sandwich	122 up, 22 down
	buy soup sandwich mugs, tshirts and magnets A slang term used by members of the United States Army to describe a fellow soldier whose performance is unsatisfactory. This term is often shortened to just "soup." The term expresses a state of extreme uselessness, which can be understood by considering the functionality and worth of soup between two slices of bread. "You are SOUP, private! You are a dog-gone SOUP SANDWICH! DROP!"

I think it's funny that I was IN the U.S. Army, not to mention working at the Pentagon with every OTHER branch of military, for three years and never heard that phrase!

The whole time I was walking through Menards with Weldon that day, I thought... hmmm... I really am a soup sandwich.

Not always obviously, like with the wrinkled shirt... sometimes I can lay the top piece of "bread" on so that it isn't quite so obvious for a while (until it starts soaking through...). But "no matter which way you slice it" I am a mess.

I wear blue socks with brown pants (they don't have holes in them yet!)...

I yell at my kids to "just be patient!"...

I want to make our home fun... right after all the chores are done! (At bedtime?!)...

I get into Facebook instead of God's Word...

"I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. (Romans 7:18-19)

"But we have this treasure in [soup sandwiches] (jars of clay), to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us." (2 Corinthians 4:7)

(Not to compare Jesus worth to soup, but He IS the Bread of Life...)